Ohio early voting cleared by top U.S. court in Obama victory

The U.S. Supreme Court gave President Barack Obama’s campaign a legal victory in the pivotal state of Ohio today, backing early-voting rights for the weekend before the Nov. 6 election.

The justices rejected a bid by Ohio Republicans to limit the early voting on those days to members of the military. The rebuff came in a one-line order, with no published dissent.

Democrats and Republicans have jockeyed for months in Ohio over early voting, an option that favored Democratic candidates in 2010 and 2006, according to a 2010 study by the University of Akron. A trial judge cited an estimate that 100,000 Ohioans would vote in the three days leading up to Election Day.

“This action from the highest court in the land marks the end of the road in our fight to ensure open voting this year for all Ohioans, including military, veterans, and overseas voters,” Bob Bauer, the Obama campaign’s top lawyer, said in an e-mailed statement.

No Republican has won the White House without capturing Ohio, which controls 18 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

The Obama campaign has encouraged early voting in the state and elsewhere. The president plans to cast his ballot in person in Chicago on Oct. 25.

Equal protection

In previous years, each Ohio county decided whether to offer voting on the weekend before the election. The state’s Republican leadership, through a combination of legislation and a legal interpretation by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, sought to make a statewide change for this year and allow voting that weekend only by military members, who historically favor Republican candidates.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic Party sued, claiming the plan violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

A U.S. appeals court in Ohio last week blocked the Republican plan, saying it probably violated the constitutional rights of non-military voters. The Supreme Court justices today rejected a challenge to that ruling, filed by Husted and Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Mike DeWine.

Husted and DeWine had said the limits were warranted to give county boards of election more time to prepare for Election Day and still accommodate the needs of military families. The appeals court said neither interest was sufficient to justify the change.

The public interest “favors permitting as many qualified voters to vote as possible,” Judge Eric Clay wrote for the three-judge panel.

Uniform hours

After the high court acted, Husted issued a directive to the 88 Ohio county elections boards setting uniform hours for in-person early voting. Polls will be open on Nov. 3 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., on Nov. 4 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and on Nov. 5 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Early voting in Ohio is used heavily by blacks, women, the elderly and low-income people, according to the appeals court.

In Franklin County, Ohio’s second-largest and home to Columbus, almost 18 percent of all in-person absentee votes in 2008 were cast during the three days before the election, and Democrats outnumbered Republicans almost 4-to-1, data provided by the county elections board shows.

In Cuyahoga County, the state’s largest and home to Cleveland, 40 percent of all votes cast in 2008 were by absentee ballot — and 20 percent of those were cast in person rather than by mail, according to the county elections board’s website.

The early-voting clash is one of two Ohio election disputes with implications for the presidential race between Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. In a second Obama victory, the same Cincinnati-based appeals court last week barred the state from disqualifying provisional ballots that voters cast in the wrong precinct because of poll-worker error.